Thoughts at the end of a year, and maybe a life

[thinkingaboutLangCleg]

I’m looking after an elderly aunt who was recently diagnosed with late-stage cancer. She wasn’t feeling unwell, so it’s been a shock for her (and us) to face the likelihood that she will die soon. We’ve always been very close, all my life. Though she was a fun, flamboyant figure in my childhood, I can now see she led a very respectable life, not rebellious or ever questioning patriarchal conventions etc.

She took in lodgers to help her husband study for a professional qualification. He got a good job and dumped her for a younger woman. She didn't fight for a decent divorce settlement in case he took it out on the children. Instead she worked two jobs to support them and continued to care for her XMIL.

The children were the centre of her life so she refused to marry again while they were at home. Later boyfriends sponged off her or strung her along or turned out to be married.

Yet she never blamed men or questioned the system that favoured them. Only the “scheming” women who seduced them. Or the ambitious female colleagues who pushed for better jobs. Or the mothers who brought up their sons to be selfish layabouts. And she never failed to do her duty as a ‘support human’ to men.

Now she’s alone, living on a pittance, facing sickness and death. And suddenly the bitterness is pouring out of her. She’s drowning in negativity, resentment and anger at the world. The only people helping her are almost all women (doctors, other healthcare practitioners, relatives) and she turns her unhappiness on them —I think partly because they all seem to have a better deal than the life she accepted.

Sorry to bang on at this length. She is still the wonderful caring person I love, though I often have to bite my tongue now. Feminism, female solidarity, could have done so much for her, but she remained obedient to the patriarchy and never questioned it.

Now she’s sleeping and I’m musing on how the world treats women and how really the best thing we’ve got is each other.
Wishing all Mumsnetters, especially the vipers of FWR, a better year than this last one.

Thanks, 334bu

Bloody bastard of a disease

Firstly,you’re not banging on. Women are conditioned to diminish their contribution or think they’re banging on
I read your post when you 1st posted. Had to take tome to process it
It’s quite a deep post,your aunt was flawed but also played by a system that pigeonholes women.
Remarkable she raised children as a single parent when it was really socially frowned upon

I’m not condoning her outbursts but she seeing the manifestation of independent confident women it must evoke strong feeling

Yes, it's painful to see her deteriorating before my eyes, terrifyingly fast. She was like a second mum when I was a child, the most fun grownup in the world when I was a teenager, and a close friend ever since.

She deserved so much better than the life she got. And now this shit disease. I want to cling on to her all the time, even when I have to take a walk to clear my head after one of her outbursts.

CA is a nasty disease
You hang onto the good stuff,what’s significant to you,that’s the actual measure of her

thinkingaboutlangclega poignant reminder of the need for feminism and that throughout our lives it is invariably other women that support us

I’m musing on how the world treats women and how really the best thing we’ve got is each other.

Very well said thinkingaboutLangCleg. I'm very sorry

sending you strength and wishing peace for your aunt.

Don’t underestimate the emotional impact you have visiting her.it’s deep
You both have an emotional connection that predates cancs

I’m not going to comment on the way the world treats women. Not because I don’t agree with the sentiments but I just don’t have enough emotional capacity to get into it tonight.

However, I just wanted to say I’m sorry about your aunt I lost my aunt a few years ago, also cancer, and I was very close to her. It’s hard because it’s not a relationship that people expect you to grieve for, they have the ‘she’s just an aunt’ mentality. I received a lot more support when my grandparents died than I did when my aunt died. Whereas my aunt’s death was by far the biggest shock to the system and the death that just completely flipped everything on its head.

The cancer and fear are influencing her outbursts now. It’s hard. My aunt’s cancer made her even more extrovert than she was before, she had few inhibitions by the end of her life. It made being around her quite hard, which I’m sure you’re experiencing with the outbursts. For me though, it fed into the guilt I felt during the grieving process. If I’m honest, 4 years later and guilt is still the main emotion attached the grief of losing my aunt. I hope you can see past the outbursts or that they don’t play on your mind too much after. I wish you the best for the year ahead and hope you both find peace

InTheNightWeWillWish - you express so much of what I'm feeling. I can't face losing her, I don't feel I am helping enough, I'm frightened I won't be able to keep up the level of support I've managed up till now, I dread how much more she is going to suffer, I don't know what to do.

Posting here is really helping me. Most of my RL friends know my aunt and I don't want to taint their memories of her. But here I can speak honestly, get it off my chest a bit.

Thanks everyone for your friendly comments. It's all helping.

Im so sorry your both going through this.
Just try to take it one minuite at a time, focusing only on the present and enjoying that. Dont even think about the future as its not really relevent.

Im kind of of the opinion that everyone has a shitty life in some important way, and though men have every advantage compaired to women none of us would ever change as somehow having others do your suffering for you kind of makes you less human in my opinion.

Wishing much love to you and your aunt.

really the best thing we’ve got is each other.
Absolutely yes. Hang in there, wishing you both well.

Yes, when women group together and support each other, sharing the same women-centred values, life improves for all of them. I was struck by how very angry some of the older women in my family were at the very end of their lives, as if the realisation suddenly hit them that they might have done it differently.

as if the realisation suddenly hit them that they might have done it differently

My DM suffers from this. She's in her eighties now, and bitterly regrets some of the choices she made.

She has always been a good little handmaid, fully believing the patriarchal rubbish society feeds women, and doing her best to instil me with the same obedience. Despite playing by the rules all her life, she's been taken for a ride which upsets her very much. What a waste.

Yes Shed certainly true of my mother, who certainly had her own sorrows but resented my breaking free to the end, although I was the one she wanted to be there. Your aunt knows what you are doing for herThinkingabout and yes it’s women who are in the main responsible for this hugely important task. Best wishes

Thanks, everyone. It’s hard to see someone you love changing and slipping away. Her anger, which quite shocked me at first, is actually easier to bear than the quiet fading. Good to come here and have some solidarity.

Happy new year to you all.

I'd like to echo a PP's comment about the importance of aunts in their lives. I had a special aunt who I knew loved me and who treated me in the way I wished my mum — who was a good woman in her own way — might have treated me. My mum was a London schoolgirl during the war and grew up with fear and destruction and a stiff upper lip. She was a second-class citizen in the family: her brothers got the education and the best food and she resented it while never being confident enough to speak out. She wanted me to do well, but she also wanted me to be pretty and conform and I was always plain and clever and rebellious. She just couldn't understand me but my aunt was able to. If I hadn't had her I think life would have been very different and more difficult. So hooray for aunts.

This has reminded me of Dylan Thomas's 'Do not go gentle into that good night, rage rage against the dying of the light.' Perhaps we need to get to our 70s and 80s to understand.

I'm really sorry to hear about your aunt. I lost mine to cancer many years ago, it was a heart breaking time. I think my feelings for her were aligned with mother love, but less complicated.

Hope she is comfortable and you are able to take time for yourself, also. It sounds like you're under a deal of pressure. I'm sure your presence is a huge comfort- a handhold seems like a small thing but can be so powerfully reassuring.

I deeply loved all my aunts and the death of each has been a significant bereavement.
I have seen that bitterness emerge in women as they near the end of their lives and process all the unfairness and all the compromises of their lives.
How lovely for your aunt to have you near her.

I'm so sorry to hear this, must be very tough. I have older female relatives who also blame women for mens failings. My husbands granny told me her lovely daughter in law was to blame for her son having an affair, my own mother in law made endless criticism of me when our children were young because I went back to work - as the biggest breadwinner there wasn't much choice - but never a whisper of criticism of her son, who did the same. There were many women who opposed women's suffrage. I find it depressing to hear women say these things, but no woman would argue against women's suffrage today, I take hope that things do move on.

I don’t want to dismiss your aunt’s anger or change in perspective but I suppose it might be worth also thinking about the other things that may be contributing.

I’m guessing she is in pain, maybe on some disinhibiting meds and (possibly) her cancer may have some spread into her brain.

I don’t want to say she has no right to feel like this or you ought not take her seriously but if this version of her is hard to bear try to remember it might not all be truly ‘her.’